Maxwell

Maxwell most commonly refers to James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), a Scottish physicist who established the classical theory of electromagnetism. His formulation of Maxwell's equations united electricity, magnetism, and light and laid the foundation for modern electrical engineering and physics. In a series of papers between 1855 and 1865, Maxwell showed that time-varying electric and magnetic fields propagate as waves at a constant speed, later identified as the speed of light.

Maxwell's equations describe how electric charges and currents produce electric and magnetic fields and how those fields interact. They include Gauss's law for electricity, Gauss's law for magnetism, Faraday's law of induction, and Ampère's law with Maxwell's addition (the displacement current). The equations predict electromagnetic waves and underpin radio, television, radar, and optical technologies.

Beyond electromagnetism, Maxwell contributed to the kinetic theory of gases, the study of color vision, and thermodynamics. He formulated a set of relations in thermodynamics, known as Maxwell relations, linking the partial derivatives of thermodynamic potentials. He also proposed the thought experiment known as Maxwell's demon, used to discuss entropy and information.

Maxwell is also a surname and given name. It appears in geographic, institutional, and cultural contexts, and historically has been used as a unit of magnetic flux in the centimeter–gram–second system (the maxwell), though this unit is largely obsolete in SI usage.